Subplot Kudzu

So last Saturday we had another session fo Emirikol, my swashbuckling D&D game, where the main plot involved the PCs finding and investigating a wizard's manor house that had sunk into the swamp. The players and PCs knew this was coming, and I made sure to remind them of it before play started, so they knew that Swimming was in their future and bought Potions of Swimming as a result.

In prep for the session I had worked out a rough map of the parts of the manor that were now full of water, and the path they'd have to take to get from the upper floor where they entered to the air filled crypts that they needed to get to, and wrote out all the rules for swimming and drowning, as well as the DCs for spotting the correct path and a possible short cut, and for squeezing through . The basic 3E rules for swimming are that it's a DC 10 swim check to cover half your move for the round (1/4 if you're trying to do something else), with the DC ratcheting up 1 point per round you're fully submerged. PCs can hold their breath for twice their constitution in rounds before they have to start making increasingly difficult rolls to keep from drowning.

I figured the map so it would take 12 successful swim rolls to get where they were going - having to search for the next stairway, doubling back in the house and so on - and figured they'd miss about half of those, to more or less match the 4E skill challenge guidelines. Only one of the PCs had any points in swim beforehand, and there were the negative penalties for weight, so the PCs had to strip themselves down to aminimum of gear (making the restof the adventure harder) and ended up with everyone having a +10 to +11 Swim with the potions. The sequence went flawlessly - the prepetually ratcheting difficulty worked wonders, where at the end of the swim the PCs were all spending time pulling their fellows along as everyone got increasingly disoriented. The PCs found one of the short cuts, but then made an ill considered move that slowed them down (Dietrick blew out the rotted circular stair with his ring of the ram, not realizing how much the disturbed silt would slow them down). People screamed in surprised when things went awry or cast spells, which I ad-hoced as costing them 2d6 rounds of air per incident. At the end they broke to the surface 15 rounds after they'd started, with swim DCs of 25, and two of the PCs a round or two away from risking drowning. Bec told me it was one of the most legitimately tense sessions she'd ever played in, as it was all to easy picturing one or more of them dying in the water.

It was nice to be able to use the existing, hard coded target numbers to scale an encounter for them. It just hit the perfect sweet spot between simulation (this swim will be just as difficulty, or perhaps easier, next time, regardless of their level) and gamist enjoyment. Worked much better for our sensibilities than the 4E scaling chart....

I'm just a blogging fool tonight.

We're on for the next Emirikol game on the day after Halloween, and I'm using the public forum as a warning to the players that their characters are going to have to man up, grow some chest hair, figure out how to munchkin the hell out of their available resources and gird your loins with a Codpiece of Lighting Resistance. Do not hesitate to call on political connections and old favors. Offer up shares of the hoard for the loan of magic items. Rifles are your friend. Remember that you have Honor points good for Aid spells and Bull's Strengths. 

Of course, none of this means sending an NPC in to do your job, cause that's just not how it's done.

For those not in the know, they had a run in with a dragon last game that left them pretty well humiliated - he took their magic sword and ate their horses, and only the assistance of some local gnomes stopped the next few hours from being a rendition of the Blair Dragon Project as the thing stalked and killed them through the dense woodlands. Being player characters they are going to get their sword back. Melas will then let the dragon borrow it for a few minutes...right up to the hilt!

But if you go in cocky or underprepared, this SOB will eat you. Dragons be tough.

That is all.

I commented previously on how the ad hoc difficulty table advises the GM to ramp up the Target Number of checks based on the PCs level (and, by one possible by unlikely reading, whether the PC has the skill or not). The objective appears to be that Easy actions have a success chance of roughly 65%, moderate one 45% and hard ones 10%. The scaling is required because everyone adds one half their level to the rolls, so to keep the preferred targets you have to ramp up the difficulty.

( Skill blather )

I have heard some talk about how 4E is going to have more by way of per encounter special abilities and spells to try to remove some of the resource management out of the game. This is, I suppose, to counter the wizards complaint of having the best 5 minutes of their day followed by being useless, but a) I've always seen the resource management aspect as a key part of D&D and 2) if you're not contributing with your personality and skills you're probably not a good fit for my games anyway.

We actually have one more session left, but it's mostly for dalliances, subplots and for a woman with danishes on her ears to give the PCs medals in a public ceremony. Since much of my mental efforts are now focused on the games for 2008 I thought I might put down some closing thoughts in advance. 

To my mind, the game was a staggering success. It wasn't exactly what I'd originally planned, but that was because the PCs meandered a bit, fleshed themselves out more and otherwise made themselves at home in the city. This made each plot idea take longer, but it was time well spent. The things I made up on the spur of the moment in sessions 1 and 2 turned into a nicely complex plot arc for the beginning and end of the 1 year campaign. Obviously I can't NOT plot, but I managed to not go nuts.

The middle of the game was the pirate plot that had some elements merge into the endgame and other elements resolved enough that if we never return to Emirikol we can call it done, but there are several things we can easily come back to if we choose. 

D&D 3E ended up being a workable mechanism. No, it's not a great choice for fencing or wars, but the fencing matches and wars worked well enough. The class/level rules went as planned, with two PCs hitting prestige classes at the end of the game and Cambias securing the one feat he'd been aiming for just at the end of play so the PCs feel like they reached some milestones. The rules for the spellcasting classes handled the tweaks of the setting well, and 40yearsagotodayhas obviously enjoyed working out which spells count as Dramaturgy for Bards. 

More importantly, it was easy for me to plot, easy for me to eyeball opposition and well known to all the players. This minimized the time and energy it took for me to prep the game, and the concentration the players required to run it (what with a 3 year old running about for half of each sessison).  I expect we'll end up back here in 6 months, in part because we'll now have TWO children at each game, and a comfortable, forgiving mechanic in a friendly, free-wheeling world is a good place to settle for a while.

From this month's Emirikol game

Me: "Let me see if I have this: you are strapping the necklace of fireballs globe to the end of the ballista bolt, then casing keen edge on the bolt, then having the sorcerer cast true strike before firing it at the cloud giant's head?"

Players: "With surprise!"

Me: "Right, with surprise, he'll lose his dex bonus to AC there. And if this doesn't kill him?"

Players:  "We open fire with the rifle." "Once he's inside 30' of course, so I can add the d6 for my surprise strike." "Then we pyrotechnics the lingering flames from the fireball to blind him. Followed by a lightning bolt of course." 

Me: "Well, the lightning bolt went without saying."

Good to see they're getting creative.